Monday, December 19, 2011

Question: Who owns the destination host?

A: How the hell should I know?

(Actually, of course I know who owns the destination host. This is one of the easy questions.)

Oh, man! I am trapped in form hell! I have to fill out a form from our IT group (or, I should say, from some dude from some section with a name only another IT person could understand, in our IT group)... I have to fill out this form because of a new program we're implementing in January, which requires technical things to occur.

So this program was finally installed on my computer (and that in itself was interesting, but I will tell you that I did it myself, with minimal assistance from any IT person! Yay for me, right?), but of course we have now hit this snag, which someone (me? I don't think so!) should've known about before. The things I need to do could actually also be done by using a secure website, however, doing it that way is more complicated than doing it through the little program (program!) on my computer. Believe me, you do not want this process to be any more complicated than it already is. I want it to work. The way it is supposed to work. I want to start using the program (program!) before I forget all the stuff I was trained to do!

Only, in order for my computer to share information with their computers, I have to bypass... stuff. It requires our IT group to open some ports, man.

Apparently opening ports is akin to letting the wolves in, because they seem to be verrrrrrry reluctant to do it.

Anyway, the IT guy who was helping me from the organization who owns the program (see? Itold you I know who that is) told me exactly what to ask for, which I did, in an email, however, our IT guy requires me to fill out his form, which asks for all the same information I already gave him, just... on this form. And I really don't know what the hell I am doing.

Listen to this (from the IT guy who was helping me from the organization who owns the Program):

"If you find this to be too difficult to do [is he making a joke?], you can always manually upload and download from the website using HTTPS, which is on port --- for xxx.xxx.xx.xxx (https://.....). You can also use a third party software to move data using FTP over SSH using port xx and we can install an SSH key if you have one to get into your account."

This is the EASY solution? Third party software? What?

Anyway, I just called our IT guy, who has been emailing me all morning ("all morning" = twice) but wouldn't you know it, he's away from his desk now, so I get to stew for a while and contemplate why IT and the rest of us can never seem to communicate. Look, I sometimes know what I'm doing when it comes to this tech type stuff, but this is way beyond my, as they say, "ken." It's like I asked for a bandaid and they're telling me I need to request major surgery on parts of my body I'd never heard of.

Anyway, I'd better go. I have to figure out what type of servers they are (where?) and if they're Windows or Linux. Why would I know that? Did I get a tour? This is frustrating. And what the hell does FQDN stand for?